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An Introduction to Shakespeare and his Genres
20
Shakespeare and his Genres
A brief introduction
Mr. Bernal
7 ENS
Crestwood High School
An Overview
The First Folio is the first collection of Shakespeare's work. Mr. Heminge and Mr. Condell had been Shakespeare's fellow actors in the Chamberlain's Men (later the King's Men). They intended, as outlined in the Preface to the First Folio, to compile Shakespeare's work "without ambition either of self-profit or fame, only to keep the memory of so worthy a friend and fellow alive as was our Shakespeare.”
There are three types, or genres, of plays recognised in The First Folio: Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies.
Shakespeare's
Genres
Act I
A Quick Look
Comedies
Comedy
Shakespeare’s comedy was driven by language and complex plots involving mistaken identity. A good guideline is that if a character disguises themselves as a member of the opposite sex, you can categorize the play as a comedy.
Popular comedies include: Much Ado About Nothing, The Taming of the Shrew, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and The Merchant of Venice.
History
Histories
Shakespeare used his history plays to make social and political commentary. Therefore, they are not completely historically accurate in the same way we would expect a modern historical drama to be. Shakespeare drew from a range of historical sources and set most of his history plays in the Hundred Years War with France.
Popular histories include: Henry IV (Parts 1 and 2), Henry V and Richard III
Tragedy
Tragedies
Some of Shakespeare’s most famous plays are tragedies and the genre was extremely popular with Elizabethan theater goers. It was conventional for these plays to follow the rise and fall of a powerful nobleman. All of Shakespeare’s tragic protagonists (main characters) have a fatal flaw that propels them towards their bloody end.
Popular tragedies include: Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear and Macbeth.
Comedy
Comedies
Act II
Comedy is not necessarily what a modern audience would expect comedy to be. Whilst there may be some funny moments, a Shakespearean comedy may involve some very dramatic story lines. Usually what defines a Shakespearean play as a comedy is that it has a happy ending, often involving a marriage.
Some
Characteristics
Characteristics of a Comedy
The main characteristics in Shakespeare's Comedies are:
*A struggle of young lovers to overcome problems, often the result of the interference of their elders
*There is some element of separation and reunification
*Mistaken identities, often involving disguise
*A clever servant
*Family tensions that are usually resolved in the end
*Complex, interwoven plot-lines
*Frequent use of puns and other styles of comedy
Common Features
Features of the Comedies
*Comedy through language: Shakespeare communicated his comedy through language and his comedy plays are peppered with clever word play, metaphors and insults.
*Love: The theme of love is prevalent in every Shakespeare comedy. Often, we are presented with sets of lovers who, through the course of the play, overcome the obstacles in their relationship and unite.
*Complex plots: The plotline of a Shakespeare comedy contains more twists and turns than his tragedies and histories. Although the plots are convoluted, they do follow similar patterns. For example, the climax of the play always occurs in the third act and the final scene has a celebratory feel when the lovers finally declare their love for each other.
*Mistaken identities: The plot is often driven by mistaken identity. Sometimes this is an intentional part of a villain’s plot, as in Much Ado About Nothing when Don John tricks Claudio into believing that his fiance has been unfaithful through mistaken identity. Characters also play scenes in disguise and it is not uncommon for female characters to disguise themselves as male characters.
A Look at Plot Structure
Plot
Structure
Gustav Freytag was a Nineteenth Century German novelist who saw common patterns in the plots of stories and novels and developed a diagram to analyze them. He diagrammed a story's plot using a pyramid like the one shown here:
As a class, we are going to look at scenes from some comedies
A Closer Look...
Twelfth Night
Comedy of Errors
Much Ado About Nothing
As You Like It
Taming of the Shrew
Histories
Histories
Act III
Just as Shakespeare’s ‘comedies’ have some dark themes and tragic situations and his ‘tragedies’ have some high comic moments, the Shakespeare ‘history’ plays contain comedy, tragedy and everything in between. All Shakespeare’s plays are dramas written for the entertainment of the public and Shakespeare’s intention in writing them was just that – to entertain.
Some
Characteristics
Characteristics of a History Play
The plays normally referred to as Shakespeare history plays are the ten plays that cover English history from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries, and the 1399-1485 period in particular. Each historical play is named after, and focuses on, the reigning monarch of the period.
Common Features
Features of the Histories
The plays dramatise five generations of’ Medieval power struggles. For the most part, they depict the Hundred Years War with France, from Henry V to Joan of Arc, and the Wars of the Roses, between York and Lancaster.
We should never forget that they are works of imagination, based very loosely on historical figures. Shakespeare was a keen reader of history and was always looking for the dramatic impact of historical characters and events as he read. Today we tend to think of those historical figures in the way Shakespeare presented them.
Tragedy
Today in theater and literature a tragedy is a work that has an unhappy ending. The ending must include the main character's downfall.
Tragedies
Act IV
Features
of Shakespeare's Tragedies
Features
* Characters become isolated or there is social breakdown
*Ends in death
*There is a sense that events are inevitable or inescapable
*There is usually a central figure who is noble but with a character flaw which leads them towards their eventual downfall
Characteristics of Shakespeare's Tragedies
Characteristics
A. C. Bradley, in Shakespearean Tragedy, (1904)
describes these plays as stories of exceptional suffering and calamity, leading to the death of a dominant figure of high social standing- a figure intensely committed to his chosen course of action, who is given primary responsibility for what happens in the plot, and whose responsibility for the choices made is most powerfully projected by the rhetoric of his struggle with his own nature.
The plays
usually classed as Shakespearean Tragedy are:
Tragic Plays
*Macbeth *Othello
*Hamlet *Coriolanus
*Romeo and Juliet *King Lear
*Titus Andronicus *Antony and Cleopatra
*Julius Caesar *Timon of Athens
*Troilus and Cressida *Cymbeline
Ten Elements of Shakespeare's Tragedies
Elements
1.Tragic Hero A main character cursed by fate and possessed of a tragic flaw.
2. A Struggle Between Good and Evil This struggle can take place as part of the plot or exist within the main character.
3. Hamartia The fatal character flaw of the tragic hero.
4. Tragic Waste The good being destroyed along with the bad at the resolution of the play. Often played out with the unnecessary loss of life, especially of "good guy" characters.
5. External Conflict This can be a problem facing the hero as a result of the plot or a "bad guy" character.
6. Internal Conflict The struggle the hero engages in with his/her fatal flaw.
7. Catharsis The release of the audience's emotions through empathy with the characters.
8. Supernatural Elements Magic, witchcraft, ghosts, etc.
9. Lack of Poetic Justice Things end poorly for everyone, including the "good guys."
10. Comic Relief One or more humorous characters who participate in scenes intended to lighten the mood.
Conclusion
Conclusion
Act V
*While Shakespeare's plays are classified as either Comedies, Histories, or Tragedies, they often have many elements.
*Shakespeare wrote plays to be performed, and he wrote them to entertain audiences.
*The themes that Shakespeare wrote about, and the clever ways in which he explored them, have ensured that his work will continue to be studied for generations.